#27: Radical Acceptance During a Pandemic
Today’s show revisits Radical Acceptance in the face of a global pandemic. Marielle and Ed discuss how they are using this skill (or not using it!) during this time.
Ed is using Radical Acceptance a lot lately, as he feels like it is often the only thing to do in this situation. Marielle shares her resistance to using Radical Acceptance during this time, and the ways she works with fear of strong emotions if she radically accepts what’s happening in the world.
Unlike other more action-oriented skills in DBT, Radical Acceptance is more of a frame of mind, or a turning toward (rather than away from) what’s actually happening in any given moment.
When we can fully and deeply accept reality, painful emotions may arise. But, if we allow them to move through, often there is a sense of peace on the other side. Plus, it’s much harder to take skillful action toward change if we are denying the facts of what is happening.
So much has changed in a few months and the future is uncertain. Loss of all kinds is happening around us and to us. Listen in to learn how the skill of Radical Acceptance can help.
Show Highlights
- Radical Acceptance is a DBT Distress Tolerance skill that is used when there is some reality we don’t like or don’t want
- Remember that the intensity of your emotions will ebb and flow
- Most of us are facing sickness and death, loss of jobs, change of routines, and profound uncertainty about the future
- New stressors at home can make day to day life more challenging
- There is a difference between acceptance and Radical Acceptance. Acceptance is acknowledging what is happening. Radical Acceptance is accepting all the way, from the depth of your being
- Naming emotions is a powerful way to help you feel some mastery over them
- Fear of feeling strong emotions is often a barrier to radically accepting something
- A sense of peace or contentment often arises when we radically accept and let our emotions move through us
- We are in the process of coming to terms with the limits of our control over our lives
- You may need more support during this time because you may not be able to find your way out on your own
- Your life experiences will color how you respond to this current crisis
- The idea that others have it much worse can serve to invalidate our own suffering. Radical Acceptance allows us to acknowledge our own pain and struggles
- Radical Acceptance does not equal approval
- Radical Acceptance is in favor of change, but change in the service of what’s really happening
- Radical Acceptance is the precursor to skillful, lasting change
Links & Resources
DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition
The Skillful Podcast Episode #11: Radical Acceptance
Ask us a Question
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Please note that questions, and this podcast in general, are not a substitute for individual mental health treatment.
#27: Radical Acceptance During a Pandemic Transcript
Marielle Berg
Hello and welcome to The Skillful Podcast where we explore DBT and RO-DBT skills to help you reduce emotional suffering, improve your relationships, and become more present in your life. I’m your host, Marielle Berg, a psychotherapist at the Bay Area DBT and Couples Counseling Center.
Marielle Berg
So welcome back. We are recording on April 20. We are continuing to try to offer skills during this highly stressful time as the world is coping with COVID 19. And today Ed and I are going to delve into Radical Acceptance, which we have talked about previously on the podcast. But we think that there are some important challenges and nuances and just more to think about during this time, like how how to use the skill effectively, what are some of the barriers, how can it be useful, and just really doing a deep dive into Radical Acceptance.
Ed Fowler
And this is a skill that I know I have been using a lot in the past month or more, and I hear a lot of people talking about using. Because oftentimes, Radical Acceptance is the only thing that we can do in the moment, because things are happening that are beyond our control that we don’t like,, that we wish could be different. And wishing that it was different actually can make us feel worse. And just trying to start with accepting what is, is a place to start to move again, if we’re feeling stuck.
Marielle Berg
Yes. And I know and and I, when we were talking about podcasting, and talking about skills, specifically to help people through this crisis, Radical Acceptance was, you know, high on our list, if not the first skill. But I feel like I wasn’t really ready to talk about it. I don’t know how ready I am to talk about it today. But I’m practicing a lot of Willingness, because of my own resistance at times to wanting to fully acknowledge and be with the enormity of what’s happening.
Ed Fowler
Even as you say that, you know, from, for me, I’ve been using Radical Acceptance a lot. So you and I are two ends of the dialectical spectrum. But even as you say that you’re struggling to accept everything that’s going on. What I noticed within me is grief. Like just hearing you say that you’re struggling to accept all of this makes me aware of how much has changed in the past six weeks, eight weeks, and how much uncertainty we’re still living under, and how much tragedy is happening all around us. And at its heart, what Radical Acceptance does, is it stops us from trying to deny or fight painful realities, and just be with them. And sadness often is what follows.
Marielle Berg
Exactly. And it’s such an opening kind of skill. And I’ve been thinking this, about this also, like how, how can I turn towards and not away? And how open can I be to the pain and suffering and uncertainty around me? And I think I’ve been resisting wanting to use the skill or resisting using it, as much as I think could actually be helpful for me, because it requires opening to the grief and the sadness and the helplessness and the anger and the fear and all that.
Ed Fowler
Exactly, yeah, yeah. And I think that’s why, you know, we as we’ve been talking about skills to offer that could be helpful during this time, we keep coming back to Radical Acceptance, but have been putting it off for more really kind of hands on skills. Which, which oftentimes, that’s what we need, we need something concrete to do.
Ed Fowler
And Radical Acceptance is more of a frame of mind, and can be tricky to practice. But we keep coming back to it because in the end, we can’t really do much to change our reality or to decide what we want to do, if we’re denying reality, if we’re not accepting it. And so sometimes, as much as we may want to resist, we do need to drop into that acceptance.
Marielle Berg
And I would love to hear how you’ve been using it.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, I feel like for me, this is a skill that I come back to quite a lot, because I have found it to be so helpful and practically helpful for me as a starting point. In DBT, the dialectical balance that we’re trying to strike is between acceptance and change. Accepting what is while working towards making changes. You know, typically in DBT, towards a life worth living towards what we want.
Ed Fowler
And in general, I’m a very change oriented person. And I really like to work on what’s going to help and what will make a difference. And what can we do that would move things in a positive direction. And what I have found is that when I am not accepting what already is, I can get lost in all of that change and get really off track. And so for me, just noticing what is the reality as it is right now, and forcing myself to pause and be with that reality, to feel the feelings underneath that. So to actually engage the emotions that my avoidance of reality tends to be also avoiding. And that helps me feel more grounded, and helps me feel more in the moment.
Ed Fowler
So I found myself very often on a regular basis, kind of noticing when I’m agitated, and especially when it just really feels uncomfortable and I can tell that I’m avoiding something. And forcing myself to sit and be quiet and notice use other skills around Mindfulness to just notice what’s going on with me. And then if there is a reality that I don’t like, acknowledging. Here is the reality, I don’t like it, I don’t want this, I wish this wasn’t happening. And it is. It’s happening. I can’t change this.
Ed Fowler
And just taking some time to be with that. It’s like a forcing myself to be quiet. That’s how I experience it. Forcing myself to be quiet and be with what is, and be with myself, be with my emotions. And what tends to happen is then things start to shift. And emotions either come up and then naturally flow away, or they, you know, come up, and I really feel them profoundly, and then they go, or I just kind of am able to acknowledge and and move on and move forward. But I need that moment of quiet, and just really stating to myself, here’s what I don’t like, and I can’t change it.
Marielle Berg
That’s a great reminder, thank you for sharing that. It’s so useful. As you were talking, I was reflecting on my own sort of resistance to using the skill, which is usually a skill that I love. And I as you were talking, I was thinking about how, how much fear I have about my own fear. About accessing some of my emotions right now. Because I think I’m trusting less these days, that it will sort of flow away.
Marielle Berg
That, you know, normally we have our emotions will, will sort of rise if we allow them to, and they’ll they’ll intensify, and they will if we don’t do anything to keep them around, or to unskillfulIIy sort of distract ourselves, they tend to have like a natural kind of ebb and flow. They’ll come and they’ll pass. And often if we can allow, or I know for myself, if I allow intense emotions to run their course, they pass. And I think my worry is or my resistance choosing the skill right now is that okay, I will sit with all the painful emotions, but when when they’ve run their course, it’s still going to be the same reality. It’s still going to be hard.
Ed Fowler
And that’s why I think that we can often struggle with Radical Acceptance, is that to accept and almost always, when we’re talking about Radical Acceptance, we’re not talking about accepting things that we like and that we want. We don’t struggle with that. Radical Acceptance is a Distress Tolerance skill in DBT. We use it when there’s some reality that we don’t like, and we don’t want.
Ed Fowler
And I think it is, it is so natural to be afraid. Oh, my gosh, I’m going to get stuck in the feelings that go with this reality that I don’t like. And so we tend to avoid it. And I know for me, right now, I’m talking a good game about like, oh, yeah, I’m radically accepting everything these days. And the reality is that yes, I have been practicing Radical Acceptance regularly, kind of because the other alternative is to feel more discomfort. But also, I’m avoiding Radical Acceptance. There are times when I really don’t want to accept. I want to distract. I want to avoid. I want to deny, and fight and get angry, or get stuck in fear or whatever it might be. And so, you know, like, even when we find ourselves being skillful around practicing Radical Acceptance, we’re going to tend to want to avoid it if we can.
Marielle Berg
Yes, as you’re talking, I’m also thinking about and I’ve been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks and just really appreciating the the beauty of the skills, that we’re kind of toggling back and forth. I find myself doing that. And with the folks I’m working with, that there’s you know, there are times where skillful distraction is, is amazing, it’s so needed. We need to just, you know, escape into whatever that might be. A book or a movie or whatever, however you like to pass your time, to not kind of be here in the moment.
Marielle Berg
And of course, that we have our skill as part of the Distress Tolerance, skill set, we have Distraction as a skill. And so that is so needed, but we can’t be in that 24/7.
Ed Fowler
Right.
Marielle Berg
And so thinking about this, this toggling, or this going back and forth, and bringing on board all the skills. And there’s a time and place. And it’s really necessary to to carve out a little bit of space to, to radically accept and be with those emotions. And trust that, even though you know, once you go, as I’m answering, or I’m being my own therapist here, with my fears about my emotions, as I’m talking with you, I’m feeling more hopeful.
Marielle Berg
Because I do know that even if I open up and radically accept, to radically accept the fear, the uncertainty, the grief, the loss, the anxiety, you know, all of that, that there will be a peak and the intensity, it won’t always be at 100. It will subside. It won’t go down to zero, because times are so challenging right now. But the intensity will not always be at its maximum. And that’s very reassuring for me to sort of recognize and say out loud, to myself and to our listeners.
Ed Fowler
And again, I think it is so natural as human beings, for us to do this back and forth. Where we need to just avoid, we need to distract, we need to not be present with painful realities, we cannot tolerate being present to pain all the time. We just can’t, which is why we have so many other skills that can distract us and give us a break. And we can focus on something else. We can do Self Soothing, we can use the IMPROVE acronym, which is a whole set of things that you can do to kind of improve the moment and, and change it in a way that’s short term versus long term.
Ed Fowler
And we can’t avoid forever. We will not have the life that we want if we’re stuck in avoidance of pain. And so it’s natural for us to want to escape the pain sometimes. And I do think, as I’m talking to people, and even for myself, like there’s a lot of distraction going on. Because so much is happening. And for each individual, there’s different realities that they’re having to face. And sometimes it’s deeply painful realities that people are dealing with, you know, sickness and death, loss of jobs, stressors that are accumulating. And so we do need to avoid, we do need to escape sometimes. And we do need to engage and feel the feelings that go with the pain of realities that we would never choose for ourselves or for others.
Marielle Berg
Yes. And maybe now we, we can go into a little bit of the heart of the skill and talk about the difference between acceptance and Radical Acceptance. Because the way I think about it is, you know, acceptance is, you know, acknowledging and recognizing facts that are there, and certainly is letting go of fighting reality when we’re accepting. But in DBT, we talk about Radical Acceptance, and that radical is there for a reason. And it’s really about and accepting that is kind of all the way. It’s bringing in your whole being, like your mind, your heart, your body, and opening yourself up to fully experience reality as it is, in this one moment. It’s very, it’s very thorough, and that’s, that’s the radical part.
Ed Fowler
Exactly. And again, it’s allowing for that deep acceptance. It’s opening ourselves to actually feel emotions that we may be avoiding as part of that acceptance. And we we push towards the Radical Acceptance, because when things are painful, we’re really going to need to face that, if we’re going to find a way forward. And so we want to radically, openly, just completely accept what is, including the pain that may go with it, in order to then, and for a purpose, to be able to move past it to not be stuck in it.
Marielle Berg
And I think we’ve talked about this several weeks ago, but a really powerful thing to do or really powerful technique to help you deal with with strong emotions is to just name them. And I feel like in the skill of Radical Acceptance that’s built in, in some way, because if we’re radically accepting the moment as it is, we’re going to have a whole bunch of of emotions likely that will arise.
Ed Fowler
And that I think is the starting point for Radical Acceptance is to name what is it that I don’t want to accept. And when I am noticing what I don’t want to accept, what am I experiencing in that fight against acceptance? So, and oftentimes, what that means is emotions. What emotions are going with this, and being able to notice and name and accept the emotions themselves can be so profound and creating movement away from the stuckness.
Marielle Berg
Yes. And so when you’re practicing Radical Acceptance for yourself during this time, I mean, I’ve listed a whole bunch of emotions that I imagine many of us are feeling, would you, are they similar? Or do you want to share some of the emotions that come up for you?
Ed Fowler
Yeah, so, so the, it’s interesting, is we’re talking about this, because what I am noticing is that with so much practice of this skill recently, I’m much more attuned to it. And very often, what it is that I am struggling to accept is the emotions themselves. It’s fear. Fear about what’s going to happen to me or to people I care about, or even to people I don’t know, but knowing that there’s a lot of suffering happening. And so fear about what’s going to happen is one that I have a really hard time sitting with.
Ed Fowler
And then the other one is sadness, and grief. And even just talking about it today, I’ve noticed, that’s what’s, for me, that the sadness is what I tend to avoid the most. I don’t want to feel that sadness, I don’t want to allow the sadness. So much has already changed for so many people. And, quite frankly, we’re still only at the beginning of what’s going to be happening. We still have a ways to go, to get through this current crisis. And so feeling sad about all that change, and the suffering that people are experiencing, those are the things that I tend to want to avoid, and not accept. And that when I’m practicing Radical Acceptance, and trying to really open myself to that, those are the feelings that are coming out fear and sadness.
Marielle Berg
Yeah, I think those are the two most pervasive and most common. And then there’s all these like different flavors of fear and sadness. We could just say, anxiety, which is a bit lower level. Grief, may be a synonym for sadness. Loss, because we’ve all lost so much, meaning in, in just in our routines, and normality, and the regular rhythms of our lives.
Ed Fowler
And contact with others, right? And a lot of times, possibilities, right? We’ve lost possibilities of maybe I could go here, maybe I could see them, you know, like there’s just so much that that we’ve lost. For those of us who haven’t been deeply impacted. And for others, they have lost loved ones, they’ve lost jobs, and lost opportunities like so that there’s, there is a lot of loss that we’re dealing with as part of this.
Marielle Berg
And so if we can, or when we can practice Radical Acceptance and fully open, sort of accept all the way from, as I said earlier, like the depths of your being, those painful emotions will arise. And if we can allow them to sort of, as we talked about earlier, like move through us, there’s there is a sense of peace or contentment. Because I know when I practiced this skill prior to them, the pandemic very regularly, that, that comes. There’s a, there’s some sort of contentment on the other side of that. Which doesn’t mean life is all hunky dory, because it isn’t right now, and it probably really never is. But we get to touch into a bit more of that sense of peace, that can come, which is much more elusive, I think, when we’re denying or fighting reality.
Ed Fowler
One of the things that I just saw in the past couple of days, someone commenting on what we’re all dealing with right now, was the this idea that we are in a process of coming to terms with the limits of our control over our lives, and coming to terms with the loss of certainty. That so much of what we’re dealing with right now is that we don’t know what’s going to happen. And we know what has happened has been dramatic, and has been painful in many ways and that this is going to continue. We don’t know how long, we don’t know what that’s going to look like.
Ed Fowler
And so the certainty of oh, this is the rhythm of life, and this is what we do, we’re all experiencing the loss of that certainty. And the loss of this, you know, idea that we control our own lives in so many ways. And Radical Acceptance invites us to sit with that, and acknowledge that I’ve lost a lot of certainty. What’s that like, for me? What am I experiencing, as I face this awareness that I don’t have certainty that I had a couple of months ago?
Ed Fowler
Even though you know, talking about it’s like, well, that certainty was elusive. That was an you know, illusion of certainty that we never had. But like, we had more certainty. The rhythms of our lives were more predictable in a lot of ways. And now, you know, there is so much that’s uncertain, and just the idea that we can have certainty, has changed. And so what’s it like for me, as I sit with the awareness that I am limited in my ability to control my life?
Marielle Berg
And I love that you said that, even though I was laughing when you said it about the illusion of certainty. And I think that all of us to survive have to live with a certain amount of denial.
Ed Fowler
Yeah, totally.
Marielle Berg
The denial that like anything could happen at any moment, right. But if we’re living with that all the time, it’s it’s hard to live a satisfying life, it’s really kind of immobilizing.
Ed Fowler
Yes. So I think that that’s where, again, we want to be able to be flexible. So that we can have that bit of denial of the fact that there is nothing certain, right? We need to have some denial and say, I know, I know. This is what Monday is like, this is what Tuesday’s like, this is what I’m going to do in four weeks. Right? We need some of that, right? And we also need to be able to face and accept that I can’t be sure. Things could change. And things could change dramatically. And in ways that I don’t choose, that I don’t even want.
Ed Fowler
And so being able to accept that part of it, like have a bit of denial about our lack of control. But then except that we don’t have complete control, and what does that mean? What’s that like for me? Based on our own experience in our lives, if if we’ve had really painful, traumatic experiences, around loss of control, it’s going to be more challenging. We’re going to find it harder to face, lack of control. And we need to find a way to do that. We can’t avoid indefinitely. We need to, and that’s where so often we do need support. Especially if we’ve we are in significant pain, and struggle around all of these changes. We need support because we’re not going to be able to find our way forward on our own.
Marielle Berg
Absolutely. And I, you know, this does touch on sore points in different ways for so many different people, depending on their personal history, what their childhood was like, what level of uncertainty they grew up with. And I was also, just before we started podcasting, as a way to motivate myself, I went on, like the program that tracks and lets me know where our listeners are.
Marielle Berg
And they’re from all over the world, which is so exciting. And I think about here in the US, we have been protected in many ways. Not to say that there isn’t awful things happening all the time. But just looking at some of the countries where we have listeners, we haven’t had major upheavals, at least in our lifetime. For you and I Ed,
Ed Fowler
Right, right.
Marielle Berg
Of this kind of magnitude. And I know, listeners from different parts of the world have.
Ed Fowler
Right. And again, like as I talk to people within the United States, as well, there are communities that have had significant upheavals, and have had to deal with a lack of control and a lack of certainty. That sometimes communities that have already been struggling, this is just like, you know, okay, yeah, well, I’ll struggle in this way now, and there are people who are experiencing this as not that big of a change, something that they’re able to integrate.
Ed Fowler
For other people, it is more of a change. This is something that they haven’t really experienced. And so I think part of Radical Acceptance is just acknowledging that my life experience is my life experience. And it is going to shape how I approach whatever happens in my life. And sometimes things that may not be a struggle for others are going to be a struggle for me, are going to be something that I have to actually work to deal with, when others don’t.
Ed Fowler
One of the things that I hear people talking about that’s causing distress is the idea that I’m really struggling right now, but I don’t have it as bad as other people do. Other people are being much more profoundly impacted by COVID-19, and everything that goes along with it. But I’m really in a lot of pain right now. And I shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be struggling in this way, if I haven’t lost my job, for instance, or if I haven’t lost any loved ones, if I haven’t been sick.
Ed Fowler
And the reality is that if you’re struggling, you’re struggling. And in DBT, we talk about there, you know, there is no should, it just is what it is. Radical Acceptance allows us to acknowledge I’m really struggling. Whether I should or shouldn’t be, I’m struggling. What can I do? What do I need? That’s the foundation we want to be able to build on.
Marielle Berg
Yes. And I’ve heard that you what you’re talking about, and I get it. And I think there can be some usefulness. And it’s one of our skills in Distress Tolerance, in terms of comparisons. If comparisons make you feel grateful and uplifted, like oh, thank god, I still have a job or my family members aren’t ill, great, that can be very helpful. That’s the Comparison skill. But if you’re comparing as a way to invalidate your own experience, it’s not very useful, it doesn’t actually change anything, and just makes you feel worse. So kind of commanding yourself to not feel bad because you have it so good. It’s, you know, I’d love to hear from listeners where that’s actually worked. And my guess is no one. They would not be listening to this.
Ed Fowler
Let’s start the clock because I’m, I’m anxious to hear somebody that works for.
Marielle Berg
Maybe it works like, you know, momentarily, just outright, kind of flat out denial. It does not work, for any length of time.
Ed Fowler
And for anything. Like, we do it because it worked at some point.
Marielle Berg
Yes.
Ed Fowler
So at some point, it might have been helpful to say, oh, you know, like, you don’t have it that bad, just get over it. And so, but then we get stuck on that. And that doesn’t actually work long term. And that’s where with DBT, we always want to maintain some flexibility, the ability to notice what’s happening now. What’s helping, what’s not helping, and how does that inform what direction I go?
Ed Fowler
All of that is part of this idea of acceptance. Of okay, acknowledging what’s happening now, not glossing over it, not denying it, but saying this is what’s happening. This is what I’m experiencing. This is what’s going on for me. And for me, you know, what comes from that radical deep acceptance of what’s happening now is a sense of, okay, what do I need? What do I need in this moment? What’s going to help me right now? And that can give us a sense of the ability to continue to move into the life that we want to create.
Marielle Berg
And I think you’re speaking to another one of the big reasons of why we even practice Radical Acceptance in the first place. Because it’s only when we can fully turn towards and radically accept that options open up. What do I need to do now? Do I need to soothe myself? Do I need to reach out to others? Do I need to make a donation? Do I need to volunteer my community? Do I need to get politically active? Do I need to cry? Like there’s you know, there’s a
Ed Fowler
Right, yeah.
Marielle Berg
an endless list. But what, when I know when I’m not in Radical Acceptance, I’m just feeling stuck and unhappy.
Ed Fowler
And that stuckness can sometimes feel listless. Like just like, ugh, I don’t know what to do, I don’t, you know. And sometimes it feels very agitated .Of like, oh, I should be doing something, I got to do something, I don’t know what ah! And whatever the form of the stuckness is noticing, oh, I’m feeling stuck. Let me slow down. Very often, what I need is some Radical Acceptance. Like, okay, what’s happening right now? What is it that I’m avoiding? What is it that I don’t want to face? And let me face it a little bit. And then that will guide me in what to do next.
Marielle Berg
Yes. And before we end for today, let’s just spend a couple of minutes because it’s so common, I think when we talk about Radical Acceptance, about what Radical Acceptance isn’t. So it’s not approval. When we talk about Radical Acceptance, we are not saying that acceptance equals approval. And, very often, that is a barrier to practicing Radical Acceptance because you might feel like well, if I fully and completely accept this from the depths of my being, I’m saying it’s okay.
Ed Fowler
And again, I do think that that is what can prevent us from from engaging Radical Acceptance is this idea that I am approving, I’m validating something that, in these circumstances, very often, we don’t want to validate. We don’t want to say this is okay. Right?
Ed Fowler
Certain times, especially when it comes to like things that are happening, governmentally or societally, there are things that are happening that are really detrimental. And we don’t want to approve of that. And they’re happening. So we need to accept that they’re happening.
Ed Fowler
I think another aspect of, that can get in the way of Radical Acceptance is the idea that when we are accepting, we are denying the ability to change. We’re cutting off change, we’re saying that change is impossible. And the reality is that Radical Acceptance is very much in favor of change. But it’s change from a point of what’s really happening, versus just change for change’s sake.
Marielle Berg
Yes, the kind of change that we can implement, when we have fully radically accepted something, I think is much more powerful.
Ed Fowler
And for me, personally, again, as someone who gets a lot of energy from being oriented towards change, Radical Acceptance is the precursor to change for me. So it’s not opposed to change. It’s like a necessary part of change. That I have to accept what’s happening right now in order to know what kind of change I’m going to try to implement.
Marielle Berg
Yeah.
Ed Fowler
And I think another aspect of, you know, Radical Acceptance that isn’t accurate is the idea that Radical Acceptance is passive. That it’s just throwing our hands up and saying, oh, well, I guess this is just what it is. It’s so much deeper than that. And it’s, it is not at all about being passive.
Marielle Berg
Absolutely. And I’ll, in our show notes, I’ll link to the episode we did, where we did a deep dive into Radical Acceptance pre-pandemic times, which might be helpful for listeners who want to learn more about it, where I think we spend a chunk of time kind of talking about what Radical Acceptance isn’t, because it can be a bit confusing.
Ed Fowler
Right. And I will also just say, on a practical level for me, you know, some of our other skills can be helpful in engaging Radical Acceptance. So, you know, I have found that one of the things that helps me a lot is listening to music. Because music kind of gets beyond some of the thinking that I’m doing, and gets me more into, like openness to my emotions. So pulling in something like listening to music, or any of the Self-Soothing techniques we might use, can help me be more open. And in the present moment, that allows me to accept on a deeper level.
Marielle Berg
Thanks for sharing that. I feel that I’m turning to nature more. So that just, you know, I feel fortunate that there’s some things blooming close by to me and some of my own house plants. And that’s a way that, when I can really be mindful with spring that’s all around me right now. that that helps me get more in a mindset are more willing to radically accept what’s happening.
Marielle Berg
So we invite listeners to experiment with what, what helps them with what helps you get into a place where you can turn towards and open up and radically accept the circumstances that you’re currently living in. And we didn’t talk about, we’ll say this very quickly, when you are radically accepting, be careful to only radically accept facts and kind of known or reasonable limitations on the future.
Marielle Berg
So because things are so uncertain, and we don’t really know what the near future is going to look like exactly, what the next year to year and a half will look like. Just be careful that you’re not radically accepting, like, my life is over. It’s miserable. It’s all going to be awful from here on out. We don’t know that.
Ed Fowler
Right. Yeah. So so we’re really trying to be present oriented versus future oriented. So I’m accepting what is right now. Accepting that there are some some limitations on the future, but not de facto accepting all limitations, to try to be factual about that.
Marielle Berg
Yes.
Ed Fowler
So we invite listeners to experiment with this. To be gentle as you experiment, because as Marielle and I have talked about, this is a trickier skill. It can be really challenging. And so you know, try to see, just notice, be present, try to accept, play with it a little bit, and see what you find. Certainly, if you have questions, email us and let us know. And we’ll try to address them in other podcasts. But the primary thing is just to really have a focus in this time of being gentle with ourselves, and doing what might be helpful and trying but without a lot of pressure.
Marielle Berg
Thanks for listening to today’s episode. To learn more or if you’re in the Bay Area and want to get started with therapy you can find us online at bayareadbtcc.com. That’s bayareadbtcc.com.